About 2000 volunteers set up ballot boxes outside the 192 electoral centres of the 11
municipalities of Thessaloniki’s metropolitan area, at the same time as the
municipal elections taking place inside. Numerous groups and citizens’
initiatives worked side by side to carry out the plebiscite, with the infrastructural
and moral support of the 11 municipal councils. A few volunteers, intimidated by the government’s threats to arrest the organizers for "obstructing the electoral process", failed to show up, however the
coordinating groups moved people around quickly and covered the vacancies. There
were minor incidents, with some police guards refusing to hand the ballot boxes
to the organizers, but legal counsellors intervened successfully in all cases.

218.000 people
cast their vote, about 34% of registered voters. Compare this to 55% of
registered voters who participated in the municipal elections. More than half of
those who voted inside the electoral centres also voted in the referendum. Had
the ballot boxes been inside the schoolyards, in central easy to find places,
this figure would have been much higher. Unfortunately the government
disregarded the organizers’ call and banished them from the yards, often to inaccessible spots away from the entrances.

98% of the
vote was for “NO” to privatizing Thessaloniki’s water and sewerage company. The
reason for this “North Korean” kind of figure is twofold: First,
Thessalonikeans are overwhelmingly against privatization. Opinion polls before
the referendum showed opposition to privatization to be as high as 75%. Second,
the government, through statements by Thessaloniki’s conservative mayoral
candidate and a memo by the Minister of Interior, gave the “party line” to its
supporters: The referendum is “illegal” and “of questionable validity”. Thus
many conservative voters stayed away from the ballot boxes, although as many of
them voted on the “NO” side.

Hundreds of
volunteers stayed up until 4.00 in the morning counting the votes, in a mixed
state of exhaustion and euphoria, under the supervision of Thessaloniki’s
Barristers Association and dozens of international observers. The results were displayed
live at vote4water.gr.

10 Μαΐου 2014

In order to open the democratic dialogue on which is the most socially and environmentally responsible model of water management, the citizens of Thessaloniki first have to confront the threat of privatisation.

Thessaloniki
is a lively sprawling metropolis located in the north of Greece. As with the
rest of the country, it is affected by increasing unemployment and poverty, a
result of the government's Troika-dictated policies, which have driven the
economy into a deep recession.

In Greece, as
in many other countries in the past, disaster capitalism has utilized the
sovereign debt crisis -that it also helped produce- as an excuse to push forward an
aggressive campaign of neoliberal plunder: Attack on the populations' social, political
and labour rights, dismantling of the health and education system, massive dispossession
through mega-mining projects, and privatisation of everything that constitutes
the public wealth. Again, as in many other cases, the government and the media
are mindlessly repeating neoliberalism's favourite mantra: "there is no
alternative".

In this
context, as part of the terms of the loathed "memorandum" imposed by the IMF, in 2011 the government
announced its plans to privatize EYATH, the state-managed company providing the
city's 1.5 million inhabitants with water and sanitation services. Suez, the water sector giant, was quick to express interest in profitable EYATH. As of
May 2014, the privatization process is underway, and two bidders, French Suez
and Israeli Mekorot, have advanced to the second phase of the public tender.

Despite the
blackmail and propaganda, the citizens of Thessaloniki and their organizations
have been opposing the government's plan to sell off the company for three years now. They have managed to put the issue in the public agenda and provide
concrete evidence on how privatisation of water services worldwide has
invariably led to increases in tariffs, deterioration of the infrastructure,
decrease in water quality, and the exclusion of great parts of the population
from access to this vital common good.

autonomias!

The early 21st century has brought to the foreground a number of ideas that are pointing beyond the state and the market, that are trying to imagine a world beyond capitalism.Armed with combative spirit, patience, perseverance and a willingness to experiment, movements inspired by autonomy, libertarian municipalism, direct democracy, solidarity economy, cooperativism, worker self-management and the commons, take small but firm steps towards the construction of a new world in the cracks of the old world that is dying.At the same time, through their practices, they question the values and institutions that are the pillars of liberal capitalism: individualism, competition, waged labor, private property, political representation.This website is an attempt to map these roads, unite the dots that make up the image of a new world based on solidarity, mutual recognition, equality, diversity, proximity and freedom.

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